CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/6/2017

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

One of America's greatest activists, pacifists and civil disobedients, Sister Corita Kent was the midcentury master of silkscreen printing, right up there with Andy Warhol. Almost entirely used for commercial signage and advertising in 1951, when she began experimenting with the technique, by the early 1960s Kent had converted serigraph printing to her preferred medium and developed a signature style combining Pop art, devotional passages and urgent social messages. Through her public actions and artworks, she promoted peace and social justice, while directly addressing problems - like poverty, racism and military aggression - that are more relevant than ever today. Kent's 1969 poster "manflowers" is reproduced from Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, published to accompany the exhibition opening this week at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.